Brie Creates Religion

Hi all!

I wanted to talk a little bit about some work I did in the past on a game setting called A Deadly Affair. It was a game run by my husband +John Sheldon, originally in a modified D&D 3.5 system, then later a modified Pathfinder system. One of the biggest elements of the game was that players were able to build parts of the setting - species, religions, cultures, historical events. It was really cool! I got to be really involved in setting creation and John allowed me to build one of the religions for the game.

The religion was called the Nord. You can read some about it on the Deadly Affair wiki page on Obsidian Portal. In the religion, there are five gods. "Norric the cruel god of ice and cold, Eitne the chaotic god of the winds and herald of change, Shima the benevolent lord of the earth representing growth and life, Raer the demanding deity of fire and warmth, and the Unnamed – a treacherous god of magic, spirits, and deceit."

I spent a long time while I was growing up reading myths and legends about Norse and Greek polytheistic religions. I was a huge fan of them. This is part of why I wanted to create a religion specifically for A Deadly Affair.

One of the first things I did was determine whether I wanted to do a polytheistic religion, or stick with a single god, or something different. I was most familiar with the myths of polytheistic religions, so I picked that. I then wanted to pull from something recognizable to begin the definitions of the gods, and I picked a compass. Norric was the North, Raer the South, Shima the West, the Unnamed the East, and Eitne as the center, ever changing.

Once I had that down, I spent a lot of time on my own just thinking about it. I wish I'd taken the time to write down everything I thought of. Hindsight, you know? If I had written it down, though, there would have been a lot about the behaviors of the gods, the rituals of the priests, and the habits of the followers. There would have been descriptions of the avatars of the gods, and of the symbols carried by the followers.

I guess, I regret not writing them down. And I'm hoping to play the game again, so maybe I can get my stuff together and write down some new information to put in the Wiki, or on here. I hope that people enjoy whatever I choose to share when the time comes.

<3

Five or So Questions with Adam Koebel

I got to interview Adam Koebel about his current projects and his photography. It was super fun!

Tell me what you’re currently working on. What’s new and big in the world of Adam?

Right now the big thing on my plate is working on what’s we’re tentatively calling Inglorious - which is the Dungeon World “mass combat” or “war” or “large scale conflict” supplement. Whatever your preferred method of describing big messy battles with lots of craziness going on. Sage and I have been hammering away pretty hard at that, and it’s in the hands of playtesters right now. So we’re kind of in that harrowing phase of wondering if we’ve made something as cool as we think we have or if we’re just embarrassing ourselves with something crap. There’s always that to wonder about when you’re in the process of unleashing new stuff on the world. I think it’ll turn out okay, though. We’ve been really inspired to make it particularly old-school in the sense of it being inspired by pre-D&D war-games with a referee. Blame Jon Peterson for teaching us what a kriegspiel is.

Other than that, working on some miscellaneous little projects. Helping Sage polish up Black Stars Rise (his minimalist creepy horror game) and poking away in fits and starts at my unnamed space-opera-future-romance-game-based-on-an-IP-I-would-never-be-able-to-afford-in-a-billion-years project. Taking photos of myself and posting them on G+. Getting in heated debates about design. Making new friends on Twitter. Business as usual!


Inglorious sounds interesting! What kind of mechanics are you messing with for mass combat?

What we’re trying to do with Inglorious is port the core concepts of Dungeon World out of the dungeon and onto the battlefield. The idea that narrative is paramount - that what really matters at the table is the stuff that the players’ characters are actually seeing and doing - is something I don’t think we’ve seen in many mass combat systems before. So we’re playing around with the idea of units designed much like monsters, with their own stats but also their own agenda and foibles. Players who want to lead an army will have to rely on messengers or magic to carry their orders to their troops who, depending on the way the dice fall, will interpret those orders according to their tags. So, it’s going to have all the potential for chaos and craziness that you’d see in a more tightly-focused dungeon-based adventure. We’re really being influenced by what came before - by Chainmail and older games in the genre. Though, there’s definitely some impact on the mechanisms coming from some more modern war-games we’ve been playing lately; astute readers will see some similarities to Sekigahara or Commands & Colors when they bring Inglorious to the table. Influences aside, our big goal was making sure that Inglorious felt like a Dungeon World game. That drove our designs more than anything.


Dungeon World was a huge success. What's your takeaway from the success and aftermath?

It’s crazy, right? I think that we had some idea that the game would be popular. To be completely honest, we kind of hit the right audience at exactly the right time with a product I think that people were already looking for. Most of that was blind luck - I’m sure that if D&D Next had released a year or two earlier, we wouldn’t have seen as much of a big jump in not-quite-D&D games and their popularity. We’re lucky to belong to this weird little outcaste set that's are filling that “waiting for D&D” void - 13th Age, Torchbearer and Numenera particularly. Rob Donoghue said some really smart stuff about the D&D Offramp, as he calls it, over at The Walking Mind a while back (http://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2013/09/16/d20-and-the-dd-off-ramp/).

I think the takeaway has been that dungeon crawling as a genre still really represents what “roleplaying” is for a lot of people. We were surprised because I think at first our intent was to make a D&D for the Apocalypse World crowd but we ended up making an Apocalypse World game for the D&D crowd. Some of our most ardent supporters are folks with little to no experience in the hobby outside of Good Old D&D (whether that was actually a TSR, Wizards of the Coast or Paizo “version” of D&D…) who discovered Dungeon World looking for something with a different focus, but that felt familiar. What I’ve really loved, though, is seeing how people are taking it and making their own. I’d like to think we set a positive precedent by making the game creative commons licensed and offering The Planarch’s Codex as a “launch title” for the game. I like the idea of DW as a platform rather than just a game in and of itself. There are some amazing supplements for it that we had literally nothing to do with. It’s a great feeling!

What I really hope, in the long run, is that DW is a comfortable start for folks who want to expand and try new stuff. A Dungeon World fan who’ll give Sagas of the Icelanders a try because the system feels familiar or who’ll pick up a copy of Dogs in the Vineyard because it’s connected to DW by way of Apocalypse World. I think everyone should try every game there is - an informed gamer is a happy gamer.


Tell me your secrets about this unnamed space-opera-future-romance-game. What are the mechanics? What does it feel like? (No need to name the IP.)
It’s okay! It’s fairly easy knowledge to come by that I’m working on adapting some of Dungeon World’s mechanics to a Mass Effect game. It’s an amazingly deep canon with great setting and characterization but what really drew me to Mass Effect is the humanism of the stories it tells. That’s not to say I don’t love transhuman sci-fi, Freemarket and Eclipse Phase are both favourites of mine. What I love about it is that it is, ultimately, about being human. Not transcending your humanity, not becoming part of the galactic melting pot but really embracing your humanity and staking a claim on the galaxy. On top of that, I love what Bioware is starting to do with game-character romance? They have this cavalier attitude, barring a few missteps, wherein your protagonist can love who you want, regardless of their sex or gender or even species. I want to make that a core part of a tabletop game, because I think the venue of face-to-face roleplaying can create an experience that video games aren’t able to, yet.

It’s an ambitious adaptation, but I’m trying to bend the apocalypse engine to my will by stealing liberally from all the other games published using it and putting in some weird twists. It’s a little like DW was to D&D - I want the game to feel like a proper tabletop RPG and leverage all the cool, intense personal stuff you can experience in that venue but also, I really want to make it feel like a Mass Effect game. I want players to make Renegade and Paragon choices. I want shield timers and ammo types but I also want big messy interspecies poly love. I’m smiling just writing about it, which must mean I’m onto something.


Your photos are great! What kind of camera do you use? What do you like most about photography?

Thanks! I’ve been taking photos longer than I’ve been designing games, though I mostly do it for fun, these days. I picked up a Sony RX1 from a camera shop in Akihabara this past June and it’s really fired up my love of photography. Right now, I’m really into taking convention shots - some of my favourite photos in the last year have been folks at GenCon or GoPlay Northwest just hanging out and playing games. It’s such an intense experience, certainly as intense as sports or theatre, but so intimate and subtle. It’s really great being able to capture someone in a passionate moment at the table. I don’t think anyone is really taking convention photos like that right now.

Thanks so much to Adam for the interview! You can catch him on Twitter @skinnyghost and read more about Dungeon World here.

Five or So Questions with Will Hindmarch on Project: Dark

I got the chance to interview Will Hindmarch on his current Kickstarter project, Project: Dark. It just debuted yesterday and it looks fantastic!


Tell me a little about Project: Dark. What's the general idea?
The project is a single banner for a single game—Dark—that can be played in several different game worlds with just minor tweaks and expansions. The game takes stealth-adventure play into the tabletop RPG space by casting all players as stealthy sorts of characters operating in perilous and mysterious worlds. It's a game of sneak-thieves, spies, trespassers, and other such nefarious sorts, without assuming that such characters are heroic or antiheroic necessarily.

The first setting for the game is the titular Dark (though this world has gone through a lot of names during development!), set in a fantastical city of staggering riches and squalid slums, with a style that's sort of a blend of Elizabethan London and medieval Constantinople.


What led you to create the project?

For years, I wanted to facilitate this kind of campaign with a system that was designed explicitly for this kind of play, so I designed one that did what I wanted.

I'm the kind of GM who loves to make maps and imagine what goes on in the game world before (and after) the players' characters come through. I like the glimpses into occulted corners of the world or the little conversations and monologues we sometimes hear in great stealth video games. As a player of stealth video games, I love the moments when the setting comes alive around you through little performances or moments of humanity. Eavesdropping on a world that doesn't know the players' characters are there creates this great multifaceted feeling. It's not like the guards who patrol that rich castle every night think some trespasser is the star of the story, right? It naturally creates great conflicts and worlds with multiple viewpoints.

So I didn't just want to design a game that brought stealth play to the table as a puzzle or tactical simulation; I wanted players to be able to imagine the spaces around them and have those details come into play in a variety of ways. To get the most mileage out of the game and the world, I wanted to create as many environments as I could—I wanted to design little sandbox levels, really—that were both compelling fictional spaces and narrative structures. I didn't just want to make the game, I wanted to support it with a bunch of adventures to make it easier for other GMs to play.

I've heard it's great at emulating a very cool stealth-action feel. What kind of mechanics did you use to create that feel?
While most everything in Dark points at a few core kinds of gameplay choices, I think the card-based play is the best example. To help reduce the impact of randomness a bit, and to emphasize the role of caution and precision, the game system relies primarily on regular playing cards rather than dice. (The GM uses a combination of dice and NPC traits to express the environment, though.)

The cards sort of straddle the gap between character-level and player-level mechanisms in this case. Inputs from the game world determine how many cards a player holds—so the better hidden your character, the more options you have available to you and the more you can plan your next move. But that ability to see what sort of options you have available isn't nailed down too tightly. The abstraction there gives the player some freedom of expression. Does a hand full of cards suggesting physicality mean your character's itching for a fight? Does it make her confident or reckless?

Part of the way cards work also emphasizes that stealth is sometimes about ponderously deliberate action rather than dashing antics. Making slow, measured moves in Dark seldom comes down to a single volatile die roll, but neither is it tedious. Everything happens in dramatic, informative increments.

Individual adventures then emphasize or focus on unique circumstances and situations, so one scenario might be about sprinting for a treasure before rival thieves get it while the next is about shadowing a mark without being detected. The game offers a lot of diversity in play, even with its honed focus.

What did you use as inspiration for this project?
Lots of stealth video games inspired this one, for sure. I love having the time during a level to explore and experience the worlds of games like Thief and Splinter Cell and Dishonored. My favorite Halo game is ODST because of the meditative style of those city levels and the way players get to slow down a bit and get glimpses of life in the future through audio diaries and the like.

Look at the variety of play styles within the various Splinter Cell games, for example. That's inspiring to me. Each new game isn't just new gadgets and levels but new ways of framing the themes, characters, and environments of the game world. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Blacklist especially contextualize player actions in fascinating ways, turning some tactical decisions into rich ethical and dramatic choices.

At the same time, I'm into architecture and history, futurism and espionage dramas, so I'm rolling elements of those into the game worlds, too. It's been great fun to study up on the physical places and the cultures that have inspired the worlds for Dark. Part of the joy of creating fictional worlds, for me, is that I can draw on lots of interests and hobbies to make the worlds feel more real. All kinds of research ends up going into the final product.


What can we expect to experience when we play Project Dark?
Like a lot of RPGs, some of it will depend on the scenario or campaign you play. The game shines, though, when it's about suspense and suspicion, about camaraderie between thieves and skulduggery against rivals. A Dark campaign can be about righteous trespassing in corrupt halls, about desperate revolutionaries toppling rotten powers, or about a variety of other takes on the core activity of play. Every setting for the game is meant to put the act of intruding, of trespassing, of stealing into a dramatic context that provokes more questions than it answers. Robin Hood was a hero, but not all Dark tales are about Robin Hoods.

The game breaks out into a few key phases of play—casing the target, the job itself, and the investigation by an inspector—each of which can be spun or altered to create a different rhythm for the campaign over time. So while your campaign might become about vendettas and revenge, dodging a zealous inspector, or bringing down a sordid duke, the game expresses helps you channel that story into those key phases.

It's a bit like the way that a classic fantasy dungeon-crawl can be about things bigger and more epic than the dungeon … even as the game often expresses itself through linked and thrilling maps to explore. Over time, I expect the adventures to show more and more ways to remix these components.


What's next for you, after the Kickstarter?
Depending on how far the funding goes, I'll be presenting additional content for the game for a little while yet. I'm planning on presenting adventures for Dark, as well as a few other games, via my Patreon page over the next few months, if interest is there.

Of course, I'm also writing and designing for Storium at storium.com and I have at least one other game in the works for 2014. These are exciting times!

Make sure to check out Will's Kickstarter and his Patreon for more Dark goodness!

Happy Birthday D&D

The first RPG I ever played was D&D 3.5. I don't remember much of the details except being a halfling rogue who tried to steal a diamond and got turned to stone.

That's not what this post is about, really.

D&D has its problems and I don't really play it anymore. I don't really play much of anything D20 anymore - mostly I play story games. But, this is a recent development. For a very long time I played more traditional games like D&D, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, and similar stuff. A few years ago I kind of cracked and found a new home in story games and more freeform, simple stuff.

However, without D&D, I may have never found my way to gaming. My life with gaming has been tumultuous - the relationship drama that surrounds so many gaming groups was no stranger to me, and I've lost a lot of friends that I gamed with for both good and bad reasons.

I don't miss all of them. I don't really even miss D&D.

I'm still grateful for it.

Happy Birthday, D&D.